A vehicle typically includes a climate control system which maintains a temperature within a passenger compartment of the vehicle at a comfortable level by providing heating, cooling, and ventilation. Comfort is maintained in the passenger compartment by an integrated mechanism referred to in the art as a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) air handling system. The air handling system conditions air flowing therethrough and distributes the conditioned air throughout the passenger compartment.
The air handling system commonly employs a housing having a plurality of conduits and doors for selectively controlling a flow of air to various vents within the passenger compartment of the vehicle, depending on an operating mode selected by a vehicle occupant. Each operating mode includes a preselected percentage of the air originating from a mixing chamber delivered to each of the corresponding vents associated with the selected operating mode. The vents may include panel vents, console vents, front floor vents, rear floor vents, windshield defrost vents, and side window defrost vents, for example.
In conventional motor vehicles, the air handling system is generally configured to provide a majority of the air to the front passengers of the vehicle, as the front driver seat and the front passenger seat are the most commonly occupied spaces in the vehicle. However, in certain situations, it has become desirable to provide a majority of the air to the rear seat area of the vehicle. For example, in autonomous vehicles, passengers may only sit in the rear seats of the vehicle, while the front seats of the vehicle remain unoccupied. Similarly, in chauffeured vehicles, the passengers in the rear seats of the vehicle may be given priority with respect to passenger comfort over the driver of the chauffeured vehicle.
Although some vehicles are designed to be strictly autonomous, and the respective air handling systems are designed to account for rear-seated passengers, vehicle manufacturers have expressed an interest in adapting conventional human-driven vehicles to be autonomous, with only minimal modification to current vehicle designs.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for an HVAC air handling system configured to provide an increased amount of air to a rear seat area of the passenger compartment, wherein the air handling system is interchangeable with an air handling system configured to provide a majority of air to the front seat area of the passenger compartment.